With the advent of electronic commerce on the Internet, applicants have begun to expect decisions that have historically required a period of days or weeks to be made instantly when processed on line. Numerous transactions such as purchases of consumer goods, airline tickets, and movie tickets have been adapted for execution on line in a matter of seconds. What has not been perfected is the ability to make a credit decision and grant credit to a party on line in real time. (For the purpose of this specification, “instant” or “real time” credit means within a short period of time within less than about five minutes.) As a result, virtually all Internet commerce to date requires some previously secured method of payment such as a credit card obtained by conventional means or other previously arranged payment source such as a bank account or electronic money.
Many credit card issuers provide applications on line that may be filled out by applicants. However, the underwriting decision for such applications is not made and communicated on line. If such a decision could be made on line and communicated to the applicant, it would be important for rejected applicants to communicate the rejection in a manner that is consistent with the legal requirements for rejecting credit applicants.
When a credit card issuer rejects an applicant, there are specific legal requirements for how that rejection must be made. These requirements are set forth in detail at 37 CFR 202 et seq. In addition to meeting the various legal requirements, it would be desirable to provide rejected applicants with a reason for rejection that makes sense to the rejected applicant for the purpose of increasing goodwill and decreasing incidence of complaints. Raw credit bureau data may provide certain factors that were relevant to the determination of a FICO score for an applicant. However, such factors often may not provide a reasonable basis for rejection, since certain positive factors such as home ownership may be included for rejected applicants.
In addition, it would be desirable if a method could be developed for verifying that a rejected applicant has downloaded and viewed a rejection message. If such a method could be developed with sufficient reliability to meet the legal requirements of rejecting an applicant, then it could potentially be possible to avoid the cost of having to send a rejection notice letter to rejected applicants.